Meta-Post 2.0

Here we are again at the end of another semester and at the beginning of another meta-post. Since last semester, I think my blog posts have improved, but one major improvement that I will elaborate on is the content of my posts. Over the course of first semester, my blog posts were written on topics that I had to search for. This semester, I found that my blog posts had more to do with happenings in my life or they pertained to something I was genuinely interested in. The majority of my blog posts also pertained to topics we had discussed in class, which is different from the usually random topics I blogged about last semester. This goes along with my feeling that blogging is no longer something I sit down to do as an assignment on Sunday night. I am much more likely to write a blog post when I feel the urge to type out my thoughts on a certain matter.

One of my favorite blog posts from fourth quarter is 'Same Crime, Different Punishments'. I was excited when I watched Colbert's interview because The New Jim Crow and Michelle Alexander had been the basis for many in-class discussions on race and racism. I was also able to connect the piece of media I found on Colbertnation.com to the self audit we did in class. I think this was the first time I connected an outside media source to a physical handout from class.

This, in my opinion, shows how I've improved in my ability to find connections between the world outside of school and our class. Now, I am able to relate most of what I view on TV or read in a newspaper or magazine to something we discussed in class, which helps me understand the outside media much better.

Minority Majority

A few days ago, the Census Bureau announced that non-whites now make up 50.4% of America's birthrate. In other words, white Americans are no longer the majority. So what does this mean for the US? According to Bloomberg Businessweek, "the trend is likely to have a far-reaching impact on the country's political alignment, the nature of its workforce and on its economic future."

Minorities have been known to follow the Democratic Party. According to Zoltan Hajnal and Taeku Lee of Princeton University, "in recent contests Democrats have garnered about 90 percent of the black vote, two thirds of the Latino vote, and a clear majority of the Asian American vote." So now that the majority of America consists of the minorities, the Democratic Party has a much stronger future than the Republican Party, unless the Republicans start now to make themselves more appealing to people besides white Americans.

An increase in non-whites also changes the "nature" of the American workforce, which directly relates to America's "economic future" because these minority children will be the ones making the money for the older white generations during their retirement. This means that the older white generation will have to rely more on the growth of Hispanics, African Americans, Asian Americans, etc. for a secure future rather than their white descendants.

2011 was the first time in the history of America that the minority birthrate outnumbered the white majority birthrate, which was much earlier than anyone had predicted. What does this mean for the future of the United States? "[Immigration] is at the root of how we became the country we are today, and more importantly, it's our destiny," Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, a professor at NYU, says to Neal Cohen of NPR. Is America en route to becoming a true "melting pot"?  

Marriage: Reason for Expanding Education Gap?

I just read an article from The New York Times called 'Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor, Studies Say' expecting to write a blog post on social class, but instead I am finding myself more interested in the idea the article expresses of marriage being a primary reason the gap keeps expanding.

Marriage has to do with the increasing education gap in two ways. The first is "the tendency of educated people to marry other educated people" (NYT). The studies in this article show that wealthier people are more educated than poor people; therefore to say educated people marry other educated people is to say that wealthy people marry other wealthy people, thus containing wealth in a small circle (for more on that idea, check out a previous blog post I wrote called 'The Circle of the Wealthy'). Poor people now have no way of breaking into the circle because they aren't part of that crowd.

The second connection between marriage, or lack of marriage, and the increasing education gap is the fact that lower income families "are now more likely than ever to be headed by a single parent" (NYT). The state of the single parent could be divorce or no marriage in the first place, but it all basically means the same thing. Single-parent households bring in less money than households with married parents. Consequently, single-parent households have less money to spend on education for their children, which adds to the gap.

So my question is this: how are single-parent households, where their status may or may not be their choice, expected to compare to households with a combination of two incomes?  

Same Crime, Different Punishments

After watching Stephen Colbert interview Michelle Alexander (a civil rights lawyer and author of The New Jim Crow), I am struck by what she says towards the end of the segment:

"Treat people of color as human beings worthy of dignity and respect and the same chances of life as people growing up in middle class, white neighborhoods who make the same kinds of mistakes but aren't asked to pay for the rest of their lives." 

This reminds me of the "self audit" we were asked to take in class a little while ago. One of the questions on the sheet asked us to either agree or disagree with the statement that if we were to get in trouble with the law, we would be sure that the police would let us off easy.

I agreed with the statement because I think that tends to happen a lot in the society we live in. The "people of color" that Alexander is talking about are typically given very harsh punishments— mainly time in prison— for minor, nonviolent crimes. The same crimes that are committed in societies such as the North Shore rarely result in harsh punishment, but rather a stern warning or a slap on the wrist.

The fact of the matter is that this is just not fair. Both groups of people are equally human, which means that we are both liable to make mistakes. One mistake for them means a reason for them to be discriminated against in the workforce or in society for the rest of their lives. One mistake for us means a quick sweep under the carpet. What does it say about the progression of America if there is still discrimination and a huge separation between race groups?

Donating to the Label

Connecting White Noise to my Junior Theme topic -- philanthropy -- has been a challenge, but today I came across something really interesting.

One of the recurring themes in the book is the importance of a label. DeLillo often touches on the fact that everything we buy and everything we use is of a certain brand, and humans are drawn to specific brands that they tend to stay with for a long time. At the grocery store, there can be hundreds of the same product each with a different name. So this calls to question the idea of buying a label, or a name, instead of buying an actual product.

I find that this idea is very prevalent in the philanthropic world as well. Families or individuals often tie themselves to a certain foundation or charitable nonprofit and that organization is the one that gets all their money. It's all, in my opinion, a control issue. People, especially in this era, want to be able to control where their wealth goes and control how it is spent.

Foundations and charitable nonprofits often play upon this control issue. They sell their organizations to people the same way a brand of cereal would be sold -- through commercials and through ads in magazines or newspapers. As Babette says on page 252 about a sunscreen product, "It is all a corporate tie-in. The sunscreen, the marketing, the fear, the disease. You can't live one without the other."

Let's compare sunscreen to a foundation that, for example, aids homeless or sick animals. A sunscreen company advertises the fear of getting sunburned which has been proven to sometimes lead to skin cancer. When you use their sunscreen, you won't get a sunburn and therefore are less likely to get skin cancer. In addition to the absence of a sunburn, this sunscreen will also give you a shimmer so you look great in the sun. This company, through marketing, has sold a fear of a disease. You end up loving this product so much that you continue to buy it whenever you run out. The foundation that helps animals advertises sick puppies and kittens in pictures you find in magazines and commercials you see on TV. You feel sad. You call the number on the screen and donate $10. They send you a personalized -- or what appears to be personalized -- letter saying thank you along with a magnet that you put on your fridge. Now you donate a little more every month.


These companies and these foundations sell you a label. And that's not so bad...until you start buying and donating solely based upon loyalty. But when does this happen? At what point do you start buying from a company or donating to an organization because of it's name and not because of the cause?

The Circle of the Wealthy

Wealthy university

While doing research for my Junior Theme, I came across a Slate article called 'The 2010 Slate 60'.  The Slate 60 is a list of the 60 most generous philanthropists in the United States. When I think philanthropy, I think donation or service that benefits those who are having trouble in the world. I don't think money that goes into universities to, let's say, build a brand new dorm building.

If you read the article, you'll see that "big givers overwhelmingly chose causes close to their homes or their hearts, often local organizations or their alma maters." The article goes on to say that in 2010, "33 different universities or other educational establishments" were donated to. Now, maybe it's just me, but I think that money could be put to better use rather than keeping it all in the circle of the wealthy. For example, instead of giving money to an Ivy League school so that the library can be named after you, try donating to an inner city school that doesn't even have a library. According to dosomething.org, "three-quarters of the nation's schools (almost 60,000) report needing repairs, renovations, or modernization in order to reach good condition."

High school in need of repair

I recognize the phrase, "or other educational establishments," but honestly, that probably means the high-end private or public school their kids are attending. Maybe I'm being too harsh, but I really don't see the purpose of giving money to a university so that their $10 million library can become a $15 million library. It just seems like there are so many other institutions that could benefit a lot more from that extra $5 million.

A Different Kind of Government Spending

In a comment on my previous post (see below), Mr. Bolos asked two very interesting questions: "What would be the results if private charity was replaced by a government tax that gave to people in need? Would 'charity' end up in the hands of a very different group of people in need?" This gave me something interesting to think about, because I haven't ever really thought of government involvement in charity work.

I did some research on the topic and found an article from The Washington Times, and although it was written in April 2010, I think it still applies. After giving a nationwide poll, the author of the article concluded the following:

"Voluntary charity is a solid American virtue, but the conditions of who is helped, when and how should not be dictated by government. If government provides food for a family...it should come from existing government funds, not from an increase in taxes."

This brings up a few things. First of all, it emphasizes the strong American ideal of giving charity. Benefits have been around for a long time. Officials would hold balls during wartime to raise money for supplies. It's even a religious value in many religions. Second of all, it speaks to the issue surrounding the decider of who will be helped and how. The example the poll uses is a poor neighbor who needs food, and most Americans said it was the government's job to provide the neighbor with food if no one else is stepping up and helping them. However, this money cannot be money brought in by taxes. This is interesting to me, because the way I understand this is that the Americans are making the decisions of who gets to receive the charity, but it's the government that has to pay.

There are two feasible ways to go if the government gave charity. It could tax Americans, whether it be in the form of an increase in a current tax or the creation of a new "charity" tax. If this were to happen, it would be reasonable to donate to the cause that the majority of Americans deem most worthy. Another way to go would be to use government funds, but then it should be the government deciding where the money would go because it would be their money being used.

This is getting to be a pretty long post, but I would just like to quickly address the second question. If there was no private charity and instead it was the government who donated, the money would indeed end up in a very different group of people. A great amount of our private donations are sent out to different countries like Africa, India, and Mexico. If the government was in charge of giving out donations, the charity would probably only go to Americans. But is that a bad thing? We spend so much time engrossed in movements like Kony 2012, and we fail to see the poverty and the famine that are right before our eyes.

The Price of Charity

Today in class we had a great discussion about the recent Kony 2012 movement, and something Mr. O'Connor said really struck me. He said that many people hear of an issue in the world and immediately turn to their checkbooks, thinking, "How much do I have to make this check out for in order to forget about what's happening?"

This is an idea I've been contemplating for a while. The fact that people, especially in our society, consider writing a check and donating money as the same thing as time and hard work spent on improving an unfortunate situation. This is the reason for the countless benefits held for charities. Money is thrown around during silent auctions, live auctions, and raffle games. You even have to pay to be on the list. And if you make a large enough donation, your name will be mentioned several times! Once they have donated, they seem to think that the issue is resolved, when in reality it takes much more than a check to get rid of the problem.    

Colbert even satirized this concept in last night's episode of the Colbert Report during his interview with Katherine Boo (4:10-4:26) when he is talking about the slums in Mumbai, India. He asks Boo how much he has to pay in order to forget about the people in the slums, because if he thinks about them he'll want to pay more, and paying more will drain his bank account. Although he paints this in a comedic light, he makes me wonder: is it better to write a check for, say, $2,500 to a certain organization or is it better to spend a week or so during the summer helping to improve a third world country?

Comedic Racism

The other day, my mom sent me the following clip:

This show, Key & Peele, airs on Comedy Central. You may know them for their spoofs of President Obama. What I think is interesting in this clip is that both men switch between their real voices and the voices they think the other expects them to have. The latter voice is also what the TV viewers of America expect. This time, Key & Peele are making a spoof off of what America wants to see. Not all African Americans speak that way, but that is definitely something that the majority of America either doesn't know or chooses not to take into account.

When Peele (black vest) walks away, he states that he was about to get mugged- something a white person would stereotypically say. This is obviously racist, so why do we laugh? This is something I've been seeing- and hearing- a lot. African Americans will exploit the racism towards them by using derogatory language in their songs and acting in a stereotypical way on the screen. Why do they do this? My belief is that they do this to devalue the words and actions. By using them themselves, it can't mean a whole lot when other people use them in a negative way towards them. 

Honestly, I'm not sure whether or not this is very effective. If my theory is correct, there will soon be a time where derogatory terms will be flying openly all over the place and that could be hazardous. Just because you hear them frequently doesn't mean they are OK to use. 

What are your thoughts? Do you think that the devaluing of these derogatory terms and actions will make it OK for anyone to use them at any time, or do you think that it is better to emphasize that these terms and actions are wrong and hurtful? 

Arrested Development

Arrested Development, a FOX show, began in 2003 and was cancelled in 2006 after it had run for 4 seasons. It has been characterized as a "dramedy," or a drama and a comedy. I believe it pertains to the idea of TV Tokenism because its core characters- the Bluth family- are all white. Throughout the course of the seasons, there are several "tokens," such as Lupe (Lucille's maid), Annyoung (Lucille and George's adopted son from Korea), and Ice (a PI hired by the family and brief love interest for Lindsay). It seems as though the only revolving characters are from a minority, and this suggests that they were mainly brought on to please their respective groups. However, as time went on and it became more normal to have an actor from a minority stay on the show as a permanent character, Arrested Development failed to come to these terms. That is why I believe it stopped running. By the third season, the ratings were so low that FOX had to cancel it. Therefore, this show supports Mr. B's thesis (on newtwork channels the main characters are white and they are the ones who have the most complex lives whereas minority characters play a less complex role) because its failure to add minority characters as constant characters most likely led to its cancellation.

What's a Feminist?

For a while now, I've been noticing the taboo that goes along with feminism or being a feminist. How many times have you heard, "I'm not a feminist, but I do think women should get equal pay in the workplace"? I've heard it plenty, and it's starting to bother me a little bit.

I looked up the definition of feminism in the Merriam-Webster dictionary and got this: "The theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes; organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests."

According to this definition, women who claim they want to be treated equally but say they aren't feminists, in fact, are feminists. They may not be organizing activities that promote women's rights, but they are promoting equality between the sexes.

So why do they try to distance themselves from the label "feminist"? Why has feminism become almost as feared as Communism? Maybe it's because the only feminists in history who have spoken out have seemed rather radical. For example, the group of women who called themselves "The Feminists" never gained a very respectable rep. Their rules were way too harsh, like the rule that "only one-third [of its members] could be married or living with a man" (www.feminist.com). In my opinion, this isn't fair. Women should have been allowed to join no matter what their situation with men was. Also, wouldn't it show that women can be independent and strong even if they were with a man?

Radical groups such as The Feminists set a bad tone for the rest of the movement. Women who claimed they were feminists were automatically put in the radical category. In society's mind, there was no middle ground or such thing as a quiet feminist, and I still see this today. What people need to realize is that feminism not only has to do with equal pay and voting rights, it also has to do with the right to be in the military and the right to any type of contraceptives. What people also need to realize is that men can be feminists, too. A poll states that out of 100 people, 14 considered themselves feminists and 17 want their daughters to be feminists. If this is a reflection of America today, then what is the status of women going to be in the future? I encourage you to read the rest of the poll. I find the politics/media section really interesting.

A Lincoln Reconstruction

In honor of former President Lincoln's birthday today, several news sources (like the NYT) are coming out with a surprising story surrounding the famous painting of his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln.

Look familiar? That Lincoln broach resting on her chest and the love story that goes with the painting are heart warming. Apparently, Mary and a painter named Francis Carpenter- who stayed at the White House for some time- secretly worked on this portrait so that she could surprise her husband with it. Unfortunately, the president was assassinated before she could present it to him. 

It turns out that this story was untrue. An unknown painter who called himself Lew Bloom actually painted the following portrait of an unidentified woman:

When he heard that Mary had died, he painted over his work to make the woman look more like the president's widow and put Lincoln's face on a broach on her dress. He also reconstructed another story that convinced her descendants to pay a great amount of money for the painting. 

We have been talking about construction and reconstruction for a while now in American Studies, and this story makes me wonder about a person's motive for reconstructing a story. In the case of our reconstruction projects (where we had to reconstruct the Reconstruction era after the Civil War), the motive was to create a better and more fair life for the freedmen with the hope of reducing their 100-year wait for voting rights. In the case of this Mary Todd Lincoln painting, Bloom's motive was to take advantage of a sad situation in order to be rich. So reconstruction can be bad and it can be good, but my question is that in the end, will the outcome be the same as if there hadn't been a reconstruction? Bloom was found out and that caused distress on Lincoln's descendants. How do we know our reconstruction of the Reconstruction era would create a different outcome?

Whitewashing History

The Tea Party can't deny that slavery happened, but it will do everything it can to make sure it's not taught in schools. Right now, the party is focussed on Tennessee. According to a Huffington Post article, "The group is seeking to remove references to slavery and mentions of the country's founders being slave owners." They believe that much of the "criticism" surrounding these topics has been "made-up" and that it's the founding fathers' "progress that we need to look at."

This is a sad attempt to cover up the fact that the Southerners, namely most of the Founding Fathers, once thought it was OK to own people. Does the Tea Party think that if it isn't written in books or learned at school it didn't happen? By ignoring slavery, they ignore the reason our nation is the way it is.

Part of why the Tea Party thinks they can rule out slavery is due to the fact that "the Texas Board of Education approved revisions to its Social Studies curriculum that would put a conservative twist on history through revised textbooks and teaching standards" (HP article mentioned before). How scary is that? A group of people was so influential that textbooks will now contain material either excluding slavery or making slavery seem acceptable.

My question is this: if young people aren't taught the mistakes of the past, how can they be expected to produce a better future?

What it all Comes Down to: The Meta-Post

Well, it's the end of the semester, and that means a little self-reflection is in order. From 'To Standardize or not to Standardize?' all the way to 'A Disconnected Nation', many transformations have occurred. At the same time, some things have stayed constant.

As strange as it is for me to say, relating my posts to America has been my biggest challenge. As I learned about the country and furthered my analysis skills in my American studies class, I became more comfortable critiquing it and some of its decisions in post such as 'Clash of the Races', where I said, "America prides itself in being a tolerant nation while at the time time being racist against people who aren't white." I was originally worried that critiquing America would seem unpatriotic, but later say that critiquing was necessary. Especially when blogging. I've learned that a blog, in order to prompt discussion, must discuss a controversial topic.

A theme that has recurred in my blog is Social Darwinism, found in at least three of my posts. In 'People and their Masks', I wrote about how, due to Social Darwinism, "[Americans] feel that we are better than the rest of the world." 'Unhealthy Competition' exhibits the corruption in America that people experience while fighting to be the fittest: "People come to America expecting a fair fight to the top, but like The Crucible says, 'spies of each side are at work undermining the other'." The political aspect is discussed in 'Who really IS to Blame?': "Politicians with the fewest amount of flaws excel and the ones with more than a few flaws fail."The topic of Social Darwinism is important to me because I experience it every day- at school, among friends, at home. The people in the society I live in are constantly competing.

The blog I am least proud of is 'Intelligence vs. Entertainment', where I mention the insignificance of a vet-turned-ballroom-dancer and the significance of a Russian spy ring in America, but never actually develop the explanation behind my claims. I wasn't as invested in this topic as I had been in others, and that really showed. The post was short, lacked analysis, and had two pictures. The pictures, I admit, were an attempt to make the blog look longer. You will notice that the posts I really cared about have small pictures and many words, compared to this blog post that has two pictures and not many words.

I would have to say that 'A Disconnected Nation' is the post I am the most proud of thus far. I was able to connect a book I was reading on my own time to the ever-present topic in class of the American Dream. I made a claim- "I don't think individual communities try to 'relate' to other communities. That is why the nation is so racially and culturally segregated."- and backed it up with analysis and personal experience. That, to me, shows improvement in my writing.

All in all, I've enjoyed writing this blog. I hope that my posts will only get better during second semester!

A Disconnected Nation

Recently, I have been reading a book by Eboo Patel, an Indian American Muslim, called Acts of Faith. It is a story about the journey he took to find his identity. This morning I came upon an interesting definition of the American dream. In his mind, the American dream is "the idea of different communities retaining their uniqueness while relating in a way that recognizes they share universal values" (Acts of Faith 92).

Right off the bat I disagreed with the statement that this is an American dream. I have found that most communities are pretty uniform. And when you do find a unique community, it's as if you're in another country. For example when I visit Devon (Little India), I feel like I am an ocean away from America's values and it's structure. This is how America is, and I don't think individual communities try to "relate" to other communities. That is why the nation is so racially and culturally segregated. Chicago is a prime example for that.

Further, there is no way that all of America "shares universal values." That goes along with the idea that every American's dream is different. Definitions of success are different. Family values are different. When you have a such a disconnected nation, it is near impossible to instill the same values in every person.

I don't usually read these books, but I have found this one to be really, really interesting. His discussions about identity and American culture are so relatable, so I was surprised when I read this definition of the American dream and disagreed. Maybe he's focusing on the handful of activists from different communities that advocate for a more cohesive America, but I just think that when you look at the country as a whole, you cannot conclude that individual communities of America are trying to reach out and relate to each other. What do you think?

The Royal Role

Meet Sophia the First, Disney's newest princess:

Like other Disney princesses, her gown is dazzling and every hair is in it's place, but unlike the others, she's just a kid. Sophia was created to target two to seven-year-olds and will appear in both a movie and a series of episodes. Disney's hopes? According to Nancy Kanter- Disney's general manager for the younger world- "[Kids will learn that] what makes a real princess is what’s inside, not what’s outside" ('For Disney, A a Younger Princess'). Kanter goes on to say that "what's inside" will include getting along with siblings and learning how to be kind. 

But my question is this: Why does this character have to be a princess? If what Kanter says is true, the amount of dresses you own and the position you hold in society should not decide whether or not you are a "princess." So why do such simple skills have to be taught by a royal figure?

America has idealized the royal role, which is sad because it's such an unattainable role. No matter how hard most American children try to follow what Sophia the First teaches, they probably won't be able to become a princess. Harsh, I know, but true. In my opinion, a normal young child can easily teach these ideals. If that were the case, children would have a goal capable of achieving. America even over-publicized and glamorized the Royal Wedding, which didn't even take place here. It is very likely that no royal wedding will ever be American.  

Something else Kanter said struck me: “If kids relate to what they watch — if they can put themselves in that world — that’s where real learning can start.” This statement is true, but how are these kids expected to put themselves in the world of a princess? By dreaming? The "real learning" starts when kids can be shown that getting along with your siblings and being kind are things that people just like them can do.